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Copyright date is a clue, but it is frequently abused by developers who have not actually published a program on the given date. Rather, it is more often used as a guide to when they began work on the program. The rcs manpage does not give an initial release date; a WP:RS addressing the given statement is needed rather than editor's inferences TEDickey ( talk) 12:03, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
I found a few authors asserting this. However the closest from Tichy would be this message which quotes from a defunct (and non-archived) website: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-rcs/2009-08/msg00001.html (and I seem to recall having read this before). The various discussions make it clear that rcs was distributed in source form, free of charge from the outset. Tichy's notice in the rcs version 3 provided in the 4.3BSD contrib area (which also has emacs) made it clear that he was concerned about it being incorporated into some commercial product (for instance, hijacked by AT&T). If there's a verifiable reliable source to the contrary, it might be interesting to discuss. Discussing unpublished, or make-believe sources is not interesting. TEDickey ( talk) 00:54, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
/* Copyright (C) 1982, 1988, 1989 Walter Tichy * All rights reserved. * * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted * provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are * duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation, * advertising materials, and other materials related to such * distribution and use acknowledge that the software was developed * by Walter Tichy. * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR * IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED * WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. * * Report all problems and direct all questions to: * rcs-bugs@cs.purdue.edu * */
Notice that this is an instance of the ancestral BSD license referenced in the BSD licenses article I linked you to. It seems like you didn't even consider reading that article before pulling out your “revert” hammer. Please notice that reverting other's revisions without explanation can be seen as a form of edit warring and is a violation of the rules of Wikipedia. Now the important aspect is this part of the license:
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation, advertising materials, and other materials related to such distribution and use acknowledge that the software was developed by Walter Tichy.
This part is commonly referred to as the “advertisement clause” because it requires every redistributor of the software to make advertisement for it in all supplementary materials. Now if you read the BSD licenses article, you would find the following sentence (emphasis mine, references removed):
Two variants of the license, the New BSD License/Modified BSD License (3-clause), and the Simplified BSD License/FreeBSD License (2-clause) have been verified as GPL-compatible free software licenses by the Free Software Foundation, and have been vetted as open source licenses by the Open Source Initiative, while the original, 4-clause license has not been accepted as an open source license and, although the original is considered to be a free software license by the FSF, the FSF does not consider it to be compatible with the GPL due to the advertising clause.
The reason why the original 4-clause license has not been accepted as an open source license is the aforementioned advertisement clause, which is present in the license of RCS at that time. Thus it is completely correct to call it “partially free,” because the license is not a vetted open source license and in fact contains language that restricts the freedom to use the software in obnoxious ways. If you insist on my explanations being wrong, please do so within the next 24 hours after which I will restore the revision by user Schily unless I see further arguments from you. “not found in source” is not a valid argument when the clause referred to takes up more than 50% of the license text and is specifically referred to on other pages as “the advertisement clause.”
Finally, please stop accusing me of meatpuppery. I have been watching this page for a while now and I saw this edit. I have also been watching you for a while now because you seem to exhibit a repeated pattern of behaviour in which you revert edits that don't fit into your narrow world view and refuse to partake in any sort of discussion about the facts in a meaningful way. Just because the source others cite doesn't contain the statement they wrote down verbatim, doesn't mean that the statement isn't backed by the source. Please reconsider your behaviour. -- FUZxxl ( talk) 11:16, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
If you claim that the perception of licenses was different back then, please provide proper citation. Everything else is WP:OR. ~~I'll revert your edit now because you seem to be unable to provide tangible evidence that the properly cited evidence I provide is incorrect.~~ -- FUZxxl ( talk) 11:22, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
On another thought, the current version of the citation looks fine, so let's leave it this way. -- FUZxxl ( talk) 11:26, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
There's a mailing list via GNU, and it's a GNU project as demonstrated by its presence in http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/rcs/ (combined with the site description at the top of the filesystem). TEDickey ( talk) 00:50, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
It would be nice if the source had a diff and/or pointed to a bug-tracking system to give the actual change made and the rationale (to put the change into the proper perspective). TEDickey ( talk) 01:42, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
One of the problems on relying on a comment as a "source" is that the actual change is not shown. For instance, in RCS 4.3 (July 26, 1990, over a year later), the same $Log$ comment is still the most recent in more than one file (rlog.c, curdir.c for instance) but the license at the top of the file is GPLv1+ (and there is no $Log$ comment which tells about this change). There is by the way an "old" directory on RCS's ftp site which might contain interesting versions (but it's unreadable). TEDickey ( talk) 02:11, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
That read as an attack on the developers of rcs - you need a specific WP:RS to introduce WP:NPOV material TEDickey ( talk) 23:25, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
I hope you eventually learn that you cannot require other people to give reliable sources that can be verified on-line from web-servers. If you don't we would need to follow your idiosyncratic definition of a reliable (sic) source and declare RCS non-free as there is no way (sic) to verify whether the conversion to the GPL has been done rightfully. Schily ( talk) 18:14, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
I just trimmed the licensing section. A lot of it was original research based on primary sources, and of dubious validity. E.g.,
Because there is no date information, it is not possible to determine when it was added
is the argument from silence. Maybe there actually is a source for this somewhere and the editor who added this just didn't find it. QVVERTYVS ( hm?) 11:52, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
The ftp links work (for me, at any rate). Perhaps you intended a "better source" tag. Responding to your comment: file-modification times on a remote server are not a good way to determine the age of a source. Rather, the date would be part of the text. (Agreeing, there is a reasonable amount of material which may be of interest, but developing it in Wikipedia is pointless) TEDickey ( talk) 13:43, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
They are ftp-URLs. You may be running on a network where those are prohibited. If that is the case, it is a limitation for you, but not for many others. (A better source would be nice, but that aspect is not why I suggested "better source"). TEDickey ( talk) 17:25, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
this link might be useful. On the same site (ftp.mrynet.com:/operatingsystems/CSRG) there is a set of CD images, but offhand the ftp-links have been the most generally accessible. TEDickey ( talk) 20:24, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
Has anyone been able to find a source for the comment about many teams not using branches in RCS? I am not able to find anything to back that up, but I may just be searching in the wrong places. ZPDeLong ( talk) 21:24, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
still used as a back end for ESR's SRC, which is in use today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.33.100.29 ( talk) 08:30, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
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Copyright date is a clue, but it is frequently abused by developers who have not actually published a program on the given date. Rather, it is more often used as a guide to when they began work on the program. The rcs manpage does not give an initial release date; a WP:RS addressing the given statement is needed rather than editor's inferences TEDickey ( talk) 12:03, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
I found a few authors asserting this. However the closest from Tichy would be this message which quotes from a defunct (and non-archived) website: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-rcs/2009-08/msg00001.html (and I seem to recall having read this before). The various discussions make it clear that rcs was distributed in source form, free of charge from the outset. Tichy's notice in the rcs version 3 provided in the 4.3BSD contrib area (which also has emacs) made it clear that he was concerned about it being incorporated into some commercial product (for instance, hijacked by AT&T). If there's a verifiable reliable source to the contrary, it might be interesting to discuss. Discussing unpublished, or make-believe sources is not interesting. TEDickey ( talk) 00:54, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
/* Copyright (C) 1982, 1988, 1989 Walter Tichy * All rights reserved. * * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted * provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are * duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation, * advertising materials, and other materials related to such * distribution and use acknowledge that the software was developed * by Walter Tichy. * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR * IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED * WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. * * Report all problems and direct all questions to: * rcs-bugs@cs.purdue.edu * */
Notice that this is an instance of the ancestral BSD license referenced in the BSD licenses article I linked you to. It seems like you didn't even consider reading that article before pulling out your “revert” hammer. Please notice that reverting other's revisions without explanation can be seen as a form of edit warring and is a violation of the rules of Wikipedia. Now the important aspect is this part of the license:
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation, advertising materials, and other materials related to such distribution and use acknowledge that the software was developed by Walter Tichy.
This part is commonly referred to as the “advertisement clause” because it requires every redistributor of the software to make advertisement for it in all supplementary materials. Now if you read the BSD licenses article, you would find the following sentence (emphasis mine, references removed):
Two variants of the license, the New BSD License/Modified BSD License (3-clause), and the Simplified BSD License/FreeBSD License (2-clause) have been verified as GPL-compatible free software licenses by the Free Software Foundation, and have been vetted as open source licenses by the Open Source Initiative, while the original, 4-clause license has not been accepted as an open source license and, although the original is considered to be a free software license by the FSF, the FSF does not consider it to be compatible with the GPL due to the advertising clause.
The reason why the original 4-clause license has not been accepted as an open source license is the aforementioned advertisement clause, which is present in the license of RCS at that time. Thus it is completely correct to call it “partially free,” because the license is not a vetted open source license and in fact contains language that restricts the freedom to use the software in obnoxious ways. If you insist on my explanations being wrong, please do so within the next 24 hours after which I will restore the revision by user Schily unless I see further arguments from you. “not found in source” is not a valid argument when the clause referred to takes up more than 50% of the license text and is specifically referred to on other pages as “the advertisement clause.”
Finally, please stop accusing me of meatpuppery. I have been watching this page for a while now and I saw this edit. I have also been watching you for a while now because you seem to exhibit a repeated pattern of behaviour in which you revert edits that don't fit into your narrow world view and refuse to partake in any sort of discussion about the facts in a meaningful way. Just because the source others cite doesn't contain the statement they wrote down verbatim, doesn't mean that the statement isn't backed by the source. Please reconsider your behaviour. -- FUZxxl ( talk) 11:16, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
If you claim that the perception of licenses was different back then, please provide proper citation. Everything else is WP:OR. ~~I'll revert your edit now because you seem to be unable to provide tangible evidence that the properly cited evidence I provide is incorrect.~~ -- FUZxxl ( talk) 11:22, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
On another thought, the current version of the citation looks fine, so let's leave it this way. -- FUZxxl ( talk) 11:26, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
There's a mailing list via GNU, and it's a GNU project as demonstrated by its presence in http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/rcs/ (combined with the site description at the top of the filesystem). TEDickey ( talk) 00:50, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
It would be nice if the source had a diff and/or pointed to a bug-tracking system to give the actual change made and the rationale (to put the change into the proper perspective). TEDickey ( talk) 01:42, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
One of the problems on relying on a comment as a "source" is that the actual change is not shown. For instance, in RCS 4.3 (July 26, 1990, over a year later), the same $Log$ comment is still the most recent in more than one file (rlog.c, curdir.c for instance) but the license at the top of the file is GPLv1+ (and there is no $Log$ comment which tells about this change). There is by the way an "old" directory on RCS's ftp site which might contain interesting versions (but it's unreadable). TEDickey ( talk) 02:11, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
That read as an attack on the developers of rcs - you need a specific WP:RS to introduce WP:NPOV material TEDickey ( talk) 23:25, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
I hope you eventually learn that you cannot require other people to give reliable sources that can be verified on-line from web-servers. If you don't we would need to follow your idiosyncratic definition of a reliable (sic) source and declare RCS non-free as there is no way (sic) to verify whether the conversion to the GPL has been done rightfully. Schily ( talk) 18:14, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
I just trimmed the licensing section. A lot of it was original research based on primary sources, and of dubious validity. E.g.,
Because there is no date information, it is not possible to determine when it was added
is the argument from silence. Maybe there actually is a source for this somewhere and the editor who added this just didn't find it. QVVERTYVS ( hm?) 11:52, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
The ftp links work (for me, at any rate). Perhaps you intended a "better source" tag. Responding to your comment: file-modification times on a remote server are not a good way to determine the age of a source. Rather, the date would be part of the text. (Agreeing, there is a reasonable amount of material which may be of interest, but developing it in Wikipedia is pointless) TEDickey ( talk) 13:43, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
They are ftp-URLs. You may be running on a network where those are prohibited. If that is the case, it is a limitation for you, but not for many others. (A better source would be nice, but that aspect is not why I suggested "better source"). TEDickey ( talk) 17:25, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
this link might be useful. On the same site (ftp.mrynet.com:/operatingsystems/CSRG) there is a set of CD images, but offhand the ftp-links have been the most generally accessible. TEDickey ( talk) 20:24, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
Has anyone been able to find a source for the comment about many teams not using branches in RCS? I am not able to find anything to back that up, but I may just be searching in the wrong places. ZPDeLong ( talk) 21:24, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
still used as a back end for ESR's SRC, which is in use today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.33.100.29 ( talk) 08:30, 15 March 2018 (UTC)